review: strong is the new pretty at the Drama Theatre

Holding the ball: team player Nyasha Ogden. All photos: Prudence Upton

This show opens, fittingly enough, to a stage empty except for a spotlit red leather Sherrin, symbol of the game and the AFL’s ball of choice. Strong is the New Pretty is an entertaining and fast-moving summary of the struggle to have a women’s Aussie rules league – now known as the AFLW – running alongside the men’s league.

Three women integral to the success of that campaign are represented by three of our top actors: Lucy Bell, Tara Morice and Amber McMahon. Add to that a script by Suzie Miller and direction by Sarah Miles – and it’s game on!

This play is a fictionalised account, but one that relies heavily on fact. Bell is The Commissioner, aka Alison Newtown (in real life aka Sam Mostyn, the AFL’s first female commissioner); as the girl who always wanted to play but found her way barred is Morice as Jane Hooper (based on the code’s much revered and celebrated Jan Cooper, the first female inducted into the WA Football Hall of Fame); while McMahon as AFP police officer Bev Heath channels Bec Goddard, the woman who coached the inaugural Adelaide Crows women’s team to victory in the first-ever AFLW premiership in 2017.

We start in 1993, when Alison, new to the bar, is literally deemed to be ‘unheard’ – because she is wearing trousers! This has little to do with AFLW, but everything to do with discrimination against women. A few years later, we jump to her (not without controversy) appointment as a commissioner to the AFL and her subsequent meeting with Jane/Jan – and you could say that was the first bounce of the ball. (They changed that this year; now it’s ball up, but still…)

Not that it was easy. The idea that women could play AFL was of course derided by many men, both influential and not. There was (is) all the usual misogynistic crap that is hurled by such losers, usually anonymously thanks to social media. It reached a crescendo in 2019 when Tayla Harris executed a truly amazing kick – splits in mid-air and a goal, thanks very much! The trolls didn’t like that much at all. They went crazy. How very dare she?

Representing the blokosphere, when they are not representing players – and performing their AFL moves (the choreography in this show, under the direction of movement director Kelley Abbey, is amazing) are Amy Hack, Amy Ingram, Edyll, Contessa Treffone and Nyasha Ogden. Their grunting, ball-scratching, macho antics are laughable – in a funny but in reality not-so-funny way.

But I’m jumping ahead: the godmothers of AFLW also had to overcome the sexism of the AFL male boardroom. And what did that Victorian sports journo Samantha Lane (in this play, she’s Susanna Knowles and played by Treffone) know about it? Quite a lot, if you don’t mind. But it took much lobbying and Channel Seven’s eventual realisation that maybe some bucks could be made out of these female sportswomen, before AFLW was screened live on TV. And thousands of viewers watched that first match.

Linear in its telling, the play relies on Christina Smith’s clean set design to show us where we are (and the scores), Paul Jackman’s ‘stadium’ lighting and some great vocal, sound and video work from Clemence Williams, Brady Watkins and Craig Wilkinson keeps our attention. Adele’s music also gets a whirl (her 2017 concert changed the venue of the first AFLW grand final, as fans will know).

Rather like Fly Girl, Genevieve Hegney and Catherine Moore’s 2025 play about the obstacles Australia’s first female commercial pilot Deborah Lawrie had to overcome, this is a docudrama told with honesty, wit and heart by a fine ensemble of eight actors. At 80 minutes, the time flies by. You don’t need to know anything about AFLW to enjoy this: it’s about women fighting for their place in the world, with spirit, humour and teamwork. Girls gotta do what girls gotta do.